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Comment by Kelvin506 | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused. They've since stopped being that. Even if they are still tacitly privacy-focused, that's not good enough anymore.

We assume Mozilla is now just another ad-pandering jackwagon because that is the only safe assumption when presented with the facts: a major change in management, followed by removal of "we won't sell your data" across all of their marketing.

Their userbase is arguably mostly people who put up with browser disparity for the sake of peace of mind about their data. That type of user will abandon Firefox the same way we did Chrome.

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> Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

"Forgotten" is too generous. That's like chalking up a corrupt government to "incompetence."

They sold out. The sooner we recognize them as a permanently corrupt entity, the better we will be.

The Ladybird browser and similar efforts are the only hope at this point.

I've been seeking out and trying alternatives for years, but there's one thing that I think is essential to practicing safe Internet: a uMatrix/uBlock-style connection blocker. No alternative browser I've tried comes close to acting as my user agent, it doesn't seem to be a priority for any of them.

LibreWolf has uBlock Origin built in. uBlock Origin also works with Orion - it's explicitly advertised as a feature at https://kagi.com/orion/

Mozilla being explicitly privacy focused didn't get them any effective brownie points. The only thing that saves them is that they are the only viable competitor so, Google, via Chromium has to support them financially so that they don't fail. This is literally the I support my competitor so the argument that I'm a monopoly looks weaker. (BTW, Google practices around Chrome were anti-competitive)

Firefox more-or-less didn’t survive Chrome. Market share is in the single digits.

But, among the tiny contingent that has stuck around, most of us are here for the privacy I think.

>Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

I don't think I would agree that they ever actually 'survived' Chrome at all. Mozilla had market share because it was the best thing before Chrome, in largely a pre-mobile era (at least in terms of pools of users that determined who led browser market share.) The focus on privacy was sourced from an ethos that has long existed in the software development community as a kind of baked-in default that I think was broadly shared by a lot of people and depressingly now is regarded as a kind of unique personality twist that the occasional company has.

The onset of Chrome I don't think involved survival, but was instead a steady march toward Chrome gaining dominant market share.

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused.

Mozilla survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly and almost totally dependent on Google --- one of (if not "the") world's biggest privacy invaders.

And I seriously doubt they have forgotten where almost all their money comes from.

This is nonsense: firefox was and remains a better browser than chrome just in terms of usability. If you ever believed that a browser maker cared about "privacy" I have a bridge to sell you.

I mean, just look at their business model. Enshittification or bankruptcy was always the future.

How so? The two are basically indistinguishable to me in terms of UI, their layouts are almost entirely identical. If anything I think Firefox has become more like Chrome over time.

Don't really disagree otherwise though.

I'm using both every day. Firefox has better adblocking and better integration of tree style tabs. Both provided via extensions. I also prefer Firefox Sync to whatever Google has, though given Mozilla's trajectory it'll be a toss up sooner or later.

Right ok, to me extensions don't count as Firefox itself having better UI, but sure.

Support for ad blocking is by far the largest reason. Containers are also hard to imagine google allowing in chrome.

I hide most of the UI in either browser so your concern just doesn't make much sense to me.

What concern? You mentioned Firefox having better UI, I was asking how you think the two differ - ad blocking and containers are fair points, it wasn't quite what I was thinking of as UI, but fair enough.

If that were true, its market share wouldn't have tanked.

You have far more faith in the market than I do.

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